Kategoria BISAC: History >> Military - Nuclear Warfare

In Military Persuasion, Stephen J. Cimbala reconciles two central approaches to war and peace studies. In the study of crisis management and war termination, the security literature overwhelmingly emphasizes the making of credible deterrent threats and coercive bargaining, while peace studies and conflict resolution literature focuses on conciliation and the offering of acceptable terms prior to or during a conflict. Cimbala contends that both threats and accommodation have their place in successfully preventing and ending conflicts.

Military Persuasion is...

The radical changes in the Soviet bloc and the ending of the Cold War have made the sheer absurdity of the arms race transparent to virtually all observers. Yet none of the current theories of the arms race provides a coherent and systematic account of how, in the belated words of Time magazine, such a "pathology" developed in the first place. Moreover, none of these theories can readily address--much less explain--the rapid shifts in attitudes toward nuclear weapons that occurred at the start and at the end of the 1980s.

While not denying explanatory value to bureaucratic,...

The first book to analyze strategic war termination from a policy perspective, "Strategic War Termination" explores present US policy on termination and recommends strategies for improving it. Taking into account the impact of new weapons technologies, adversaries' expectations, and counter-command attacks, this unique work examines methods for deterrence of global protracted and nuclear wars as well as the conduct and termination of them. Timely and provocative, Strategic War Termination explains what policy is and should be on this pressing subject.

"Challenge to Deterrence" is based on a panel discussion from the 1985 American Political Science Association meeting in New Orleans. In this comprehensive study, eminent scholars address all aspects of U.S. deterrence policy from both technical and policy aspects. Along with discussions on technology currently available to the U.S. and how it can be used more effectively, contributors speculate on Soviet strategic planning and how the U.S. can get allies, such as Japan and Israel, more involved in deterrence activity.

This is the first description of the formation of America's nulcear surveillance system. Drawing on interviews with participants and the little documentation available under the Freedom of Information Act, Ziegler and Jacobson tell a story not told before. They shed new light on questions raised in earlier interpretations of the early Cold War years and reveal the origins of a surveillance activity that is implied, but not explained, in today's headlines.

This book provides the first documented description of the genesis and institutionalization of America's nuclear...

An examination of the political and diplomatic role of American nuclear weapons in conflicts with a non-nuclear China in the Korean War and the Taiwan Strait crises of 1954-1955 and 1958, this study analyzes the American tendency to become involved in confrontations with far weaker powers over issues of very little strategic significance to the United States. Washington threatens these adversaries with the use of incommensurate levels of force, then ultimately backs down in the face of international and domestic opposition to ill-considered plans to use force. Unlike works on nuclear...

The future of nuclear weapons and nuclear strategy in the 21st century is not entirely predictable from the Cold War past. Nor is it easy to foresee on the basis of what has happened since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Cimbala contends that nuclear weapons and the psychology of nuclear deterrence will remain important after 2000, but the character of that importance will change. No longer will nuclear weapons be the dominators of military technology. Instead, advanced technology conventional weapons, based on information and electronics, will supplant nuclear weapons as the...

There is probably no area of more crucial concern nor one more subject to possible misunderstanding and riddled with paradox than nuclear weapons and their use, not only in war, but as deterrents to war. In Strategic Impasse, Cimbala examines the critical issues, problems, and paradoxes inherent in the current nuclear situation. It is from a fundamental contradiction--the usefulness of nuclear weapons versus the undesirability of nuclear war--that nuclear deadlock arises. Their usefulness as deterrents is based on their destructive potential and the balance of power in Europe cannot be...

"The Nuclear Weapons World: Who, How, and Where" is a unique guide to nuclear weapons decisionmaking and decisionmakers in the five official nuclear weapons states and the two nuclear alliances. No other book describes in such detail the complex structures in which decisions to produce and deploy nuclear weapons are made, and lists alphabetically with full biographies the names of the 750 people who make decisions about nuclear weapons production and deployment. Case studies on nuclear weapons procurement and deployment decisions make this book informative and necessary reading for both...

Despite the development of a consensus foreign policy during the early years of the Cold War that supported containment of the Soviet Union, there were both internationalists and pacifists who opposed the efforts of the Truman administration. These groups felt that American actions, including the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the North Atlantic Treaty, and even the Korean War weakened the UN, threatened the Soviet Union with war, hindered European economic recovery, and promoted colonialism. Often mislabeled as isolationists, both the pacifists, with their traditional opposition to...